Is the Internet Good for Everything / Anything?
An important question to ask before searching for something on the Internet: Is anyone likely to put facts about this on the Internet? If so...who?
Government: Government of Canada
News/Journalists: Beat Source Guide
Medical: Medscape
Business: Brint
Careers: Canada's Online Campus Career
Libraries: Internet Public Library
Computers and software: TUCOWS
Quick tips for evaluating Internet resources:
Anyone who has the equipment and the know-how can publish on the Internet. You need to be especially critical in evaluating Internet resources because they have by-passed the traditional publishing process. Still, there is no need for paranoia. The material on the Internet is communication by humans and you need to subject it to the tests you apply to any data.
Authority:
Is the author of the Home Page an expert in the field you are researching?
Is the author associated with a reputable organization?
Look especially for URLs ending in .edu for educational sites, or .gov for government sites.
Does the author provide details of his qualifications/contact details?
Is there any obvious bias?
Consider the writing style (scholarly/professional?), use of spelling, grammar, etc.
Relevance:
What subject or topic is covered?
What is the purpose of the site?
Date:
When was the site created?
When was it last revised?
How up-to-date are the facts?
Ways to do Research on the Internet
Uniform Resource Locators:
URLs are the addresses of sites available on the Internet. You can go directly to a site of by typing in its URL e.g. www.statcan.ca. You can find URLs in newspapers, magazines, directories, on television, etc.
Browse Directories Provided by Internet Search Tools:
This is a recommended strategy if you are researching a broad topic. 'Net directories group Internet Sites in Categories such as Business, Education, Government, etc. Most directories include brief descriptions of each site and link to a site's Home Page. e.g. YAHOO!/Galaxy/Excite
Browse Directories Put Together by Subject Experts "subject hubs" or "guru pages" or "treasure pages":
Internet Search Tool Directories are usually of a popular nature. Some directories are, however, aimed at academic searchers. A subject hub is an 'Net site maintained by people with subject expertise. They select the best, most useful Internet sites in a specific category. e.g:
Resource Guide for the History of Medicine and the Health Sciences
Visit a Virtual Library:
Internet Public Library
A virtual analogue of a public library.
Project Gutenberg
Full text of many classic books.
Canadian Information by Subject - National Library of Canada
OCLC DeweyBrowser
You can search the collection of free e-books using Dewey categories. Narrow your search to more specific subject headings, and then narrow it again until specific e-book titles are retrieved.
Locate Full-text Articles on the Internet:
Journal articles are not something that people like to give away for free. Some traditional print journals allow you to access their tables of contents and will mount some feature articles on the Internet. There are also e-journals or 'zines that exist solely on the Net.
Google Scholar searches Internet for the articles that are freely available online.
Communicate with Contemporaries:
Google Groups
Create, search, and browse groups to discuss and share ideas
An Example of an Academic Electronic Network:
Humanities and Social Sciences Online
Use a Search Engine:
Google ranks by the number of links from pages ranked high by the service.
Altavista
You may get a smaller number of results from a search in Altavista, but each result is coming from a different site because Altavista is the only search engine that uses the technique called results grouping.
Blekko "slashes out" spam, content farms and malware.
SearchTeam lets you search the web together with people you trust.
Yahoo has a broad directory that you can use for a search under different categories.
Vivisimo sorts results into categories representing concepts derived from your search.
Teoma ranks according to the number of links from topically relevant pages.
Google Books
Search the full text of books (and discover new ones).
OCLC DeweyBrowser
You can search the collection of free e-books using Dewey categories. Narrow your search to more specific subject headings, and then narrow it again until specific e-book titles are retrieved.
Natural language search
Natural language is when you don't think of what keywords might be used to describe the document, but instead just ask the question the way you normally would.
For example, what are the consequences of smoking?
If the details you want from this sort of search is not on the first couple of pages, try a different type of search.
Phrase searching
Put the words in quotation marks when you want them to appear next to each other and in that order in the documents returned. Phrase searching allows you to be more exact, e.g. "consequences of smoking "
The plus and minus signs
Use the plus sign to limit results to only those pages that have all search terms--the default in AltaVista would be to retrieve any term, e.g. +smoking +consequences Use the minus sign to exclude a term from the results: e.g. addiction -smoking
Truncation
Use an asterisk to get variations on your word: e.g. addict* for addict/addicts/addiction/addicted
AND, OR, NOT [Boolean Operators]
Click on Help and select Advanced Search for a search engine's explanation of how to search using Boolean Operators.
Tips for better searching:
When you are looking for background details, position yourself in an appropriate place for browsing.
When you are searching for something specific, realize you may need to try a number of search engines.
Read the help files to get to know search tools.
Ask the right questions - this takes work and time.
Evaluate your searches. Should you try a different strategy?
